I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it.

When you try to unravel something you've written, you belittle it in a way. It was created as a mystery.

The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.

Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?

The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you've killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it's ordinary murder.